


The Kids are All Right

by 27dragons



Series: 27dragons' Tony Stark Bingo [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dad!Tony Stark, Doombots, Gen, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 10:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18050750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons
Summary: The kids are going to drive Tony mad, he’s sure of it.Or, three times Tony despaired of the next generation, and one time he didn’t.(Tony Stark Bingo fill for square A2 - Next Generation)





	The Kids are All Right

Sometimes, Tony just needed the quiet and calm of his workshop. He needed to get away from the squabbling of the Avengers, the rivalry and one-upmanship, the constant need to prove oneself. Even when they were getting along, they were a noisy bunch, loud-voiced and boisterous, taking up more space than seemed possible.

They were a team again, old hatchets long buried, but still... sometimes Tony just needed to get away. In his workshop, no one would bother him. He didn’t even play his music loud anymore -- that had been a way to trick himself into feeling like the place wasn’t echoing and empty; now he needed the opposite.

He set the music at its lowest volume and dove into a coding project, building algorithms and analyses, the language of logic that never failed to perform exactly the way it should. It was relaxing, almost hypnotic, a dance of design and--

“That bit’s wrong.”

Tony jumped half out of his skin. “Jesus!” He clutched at his chest, his heart pounding painfully hard, and gave Shuri a withering glare. “What the hell?”

“It is,” she pressed, pointing.

She was probably right; that wasn’t the point. “How the hell did you sneak up on me like that?”

Grinning, she held up one foot. “Sound-absorbent soles. I call them _sneakers_.”

Because of course she did. Well, that explained why he hadn’t heard her crossing the floor, but still-- “Friday, what gives?”

“My records show no trace of Princess Shuri until just before she spoke,” Friday said, sounding somewhat confused.

Shuri only grinned wider. “I am testing new stealth technology. Now that I can bypass your primitive devices, I can focus on improving its performance against more sophisticated surveillance techniques.”

“Yeah, well, focus somewhere else,” Tony said irritably. “You nearly gave me a damn heart attack.”

***

“Tony!”

Now what? Tony shut off the car and climbed out. Harley was running full-tilt across the garage, all lanky arms and stumbling legs. Tony twisted aside at the last minute to avoid a full-body collision. That would’ve been painful; Harley was taller than Tony, these days. “Where’s the fire, kid?”

“You gotta come see!” Harley insisted. He grabbed Tony’s wrist and began tugging him toward the stairs.

“See what?”

“Come _on!_ ”

Tony gave up and let himself be pulled. Harley took him to the small workshop that Tony had set aside for Harley to use. Harley dragged him straight to the back before letting him go and then beaming widely. “What do you think?”

Standing in the build zone was a... suit, Tony supposed, though it bore more resemblance to a brick than a person, rectangular and clunky. He walked around it slowly, examining without touching. The back of it was even more bulky than the front. “What’s all this?” He distinctly remembered giving Harley a Mark IV arc reactor to use; the thing shouldn’t need so much bulk to meet its power requirements.

Harley was dancing from foot to foot, looking like a little kid who needed to pee. “Jet pack!”

Oh, this was such a bad idea. “Uh--”

“I know it’s not as pretty as one of your suits,” Harley said quickly. “I’m still figuring stuff out.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Tony said, because that was the opposite of what Howard would have said. “I’m impressed you’ve gotten this far already.” That much was true; Harley wasn’t quite the genius that Tony was, but he had a real gift for anything mechanical.

“Look, look!” Harley danced up to the suit and pulled a lever, causing it to open.

“That’s pretty clever,” Tony admitted. “What about--” He broke off, because the kid was climbing into the suit. “Uh, I’m not sure you should do that,” he said.

“It’s not just a mock-up!” Harley said, grinning. “I want you to witness my first solo flight!”

“Oh, geez, kid, maybe this isn’t the best place for that,” Tony hedged. He could only remember his own first flight and the subsequent concussion.

The suit closed down around Harley. Tony could hear the whine of it powering up. “Harls...”

One arm lifted -- it didn’t really have hands, just blocky ports for attachments. (Tony had drawn the line at letting the teen weaponize anything.) The arm waved around a bit, and the mechanized support struts withdrew. “Harley, really, you need to--”

Harley took a step. “Look, Tony! It works!” He took another step, then leaned back a bit in instinctive balance as the suit wobbled.

“Stop! You have to--”

Too late. The jetpack, by far too heavy even for the suit’s bulky construction, pulled the suit over. Harley landed on the floor with a crash so loud that it made Tony cringe.

“Kid? You okay in there?”

“Uh, yeah,” Harley said. “I’m fine. Let me just...” He wobbled a little, but didn’t get up. The feet flailed, trying to get a purchase on the floor. He rocked from side to side, trying to roll over. Nothing worked.  He looked like an upended turtle on its back. “Uh. I think I’m stuck.”

Tony couldn’t help the laughter.

***

“Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark!”

Tony didn’t look up from the materials analysis for the new mesh weave. “Mr. Parker.”

“It worked! Adding a fluctuating subaudible waveform element to the reactive process nets me a 400% increase in tensile strength and a 250% waste reduction!” Peter plopped down in the chair beside Tony. “It took me a while to work out the precise fluctuation pattern to use. I started with a basic oscillation in the 5-15 Hz range, but that had no effect. But then Ned said something that got me thinking about mimicking the throughput on a hexagonal structure, like a bee’s wings, you know? I mean, I know, I know, I’m SPIDER-Man, not BEE-Man, but there are all these studies on the beneficial effects of--”

“Kid. Breathe.” Tony swiped his own work off the screen and looked at Peter. “Give it to me in a tweet.”

Peter froze. Tony would have been alarmed, but he’d seen this before: Peter was mentally counting characters. A moment later he said, “Adding a resonance pattern to my process for creating the web-fluid made it stronger and so I can get more out of a cartridge.”

“Hey, that’s great!” Tony said. Praise was a thing that father-figure-slash-mentors did, right? Praise and encouragement. Showing interest. “Did you have to sacrifice elasticity?”

“About 15%,” Peter admitted, “but it’s totally worth it, look-” He took aim at the far side of the lab.

“No, hang on--”

_Splort!_

The webgoo hit DUM-E and enveloped half his arm and the base. Confused and startled, the bot tried to shake the stuff off and instead only succeeded in making it bind to itself until he was stuck folded nearly in half, emitting plaintive beeps.

Peter was gaping in dismay. “Mr Stark, I swear I was aiming at the wall, I don’t know how that happened!”

Tony sighed. “I was trying to tell you... the change in elasticity is going to affect the angle of fire.”

“Oh. Yeah, that would make sense, wouldn’t it?” He went to DUM-E and patted the bot’s arm. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

DUM-E let out a mournful beep.

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. “How long before it dissolves?”

Peter made a face that definitely was not a smile, no matter how hard it was trying. “Uh...”

Tony picked up a can of all-purpose solvent and a scraper. “Get to work.”

***

The alarm blared. Tony dropped his phone and dashed toward the ‘jet hangar, summoning his suit as he ran. “What’ve we got, Fri?”

“Doombots, boss. At least a dozen of ‘em, materializing over Central Park.”

“Okay, send word to--” He pulled up short as he reached the hangar and saw who’d beaten him there. “Oh, _hell_ no. No. You three, back inside.”

“Tony--” “But Mr. Stark--” “You can’t--”

“No,” Tony stressed. “Peter, your suit is still in pieces from last week’s battle, and I’m not letting you face Doombots without protection. Those things hit hard, and you have superstrength but not a healing factor. Sorry, but you’re benched.” He ignored Peter’s protest and turned to Harley. “Yes, I know your suit is functional now, but until Natasha and Rhodey have approved your combat training, you don’t face live fire. Period.”

“You have no authority over _me_ ,” Shuri said, hefting her hand cannons.

“Your brother sent you here for a cultural and scientific swapmeet,” Tony said. “If you’re spotted fighting Doombots, you’re upgrading Doom’s squabble with Reed to an international incident and committing Wakanda to a position in a conflict that T’challa has tried very hard to remain neutral on.” Shuri’s face scrunched in disgust, and Tony granted her a faint smile. “I know, it sucks. But I’m trusting you to do the smart thing, here, Princess. Now, if you three will excuse me...” He ducked past the kids and dove off the launchpad, suit closing around him.

It had been a while since they’d last heard from Doom, but it seemed apparent that Latveria’s production of evil robots hadn’t slowed at all in the meantime. There were at least thirty of the damned things. Tony idly wondered how they counted in the country’s GDP breakdown. Production? Military? Diplomacy?

Tony dove straight into one, knocking it into a neighbor, tangling and confusing them for the few seconds Tony needed to put them both out of commission.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Someone thought it was Take Your Kids to Work day.”

A vibranium shield shot past, its edge hitting one doombot hard enough to slice through its metal chest and -- more importantly -- the remote-operation controls inside. “Tell me you didn’t let them come,” Steve said.

“Of course I didn’t let them come! We’ve got enough to do here without worrying about keeping them covered.”

“Fatherhood has changed you,” Natasha said over the comms. Tony couldn’t see her, but he had no doubt she was causing mayhem.

“Ha, ha, very funny. Has someone called Strange yet about the portal or whatever they’re using to get here?”

“He’s on it,” Sam said. He did a swoop around Tony just to show off and shot out a doombot’s laser port. “Said it would take him about ten minutes. After that, we’re just mopping up.”

“Uh, guys?” Clint said. “We may have a problem.”

“What _now?_ ” Steve grumbled.

“Portal’s shifted locations,” Clint reported. “They’re not dropping into Central Park anymore, but--”

“Boss,” Friday said urgently. “There are doombots in the tower.”

“Damn it--”

“Tony, you’re the fastest,” Steve said. “You circle back to the tower and the rest of us will follow when we’ve cleaned up here.”

“Right. Friday, open her up, full throttle.”

He saw the fleeing civilians as soon as he caught sight of the tower itself, some of them already more than a block away. They were pouring out of the lobby doors in a panic, but the security guards seemed to be holding steady, directing and helping. Guess the drills were paying off.

Tony touched down near one of them. “What’s the situation?”

The guard didn’t actually salute, but she straightened in a way that made Tony think she’d wanted to. “Doombots, sir,” she said. “They just started appearing!”

“Any casualties so far?”

The guard shook her head. “Not that we’re aware of. They’re working their way upward, though, and there are people trapped on some of the upper floors.”

“Got it. Keep up the good work.” Tony kicked off and headed upward, circling the tower in a spiral as he went, having Friday check it for structural damage. He’d nearly reached the landing gantry of the quinjet’s hangar when a cluster of people appeared on the lip of the wide platform and, as a group, went over the edge.

“Shit!” Tony put on a burst of speed before realizing that the group wasn’t falling. They were drifting down slowly. “What the--” He went closer and only then recognized Harley’s armor under the clinging arms and huddled civilians. “Fri, get me a connection!”

“Tony!” Harley said cheerfully, continuing his descent. “Did you know there’s an infestation of doombots in the tower?”

“Harley, what are you doing?”

“Evacuating the civilians,” Harley said in his best “ _duh_ ” tones. Tony could practically _feel_ the eye-roll. “It’s fine, I’ve already done two trips.”

“There are way too many civilians for you to evacuate them all,” Tony said.

“We’re on it!” Harley said. “Go smash ‘bots or something!”

That was probably sound advice, Tony admitted. He shot back up and over the landing gantry, into the hangar proper.

“Where are they, Fri?”

“The nearest doombot is four floors down,” Friday told him promptly.

Tony headed for the stairwell. On the second landing, he nearly ran over Shuri and a cluster of people -- Tony recognized some of them as techs and assistants from the medical facility. “What are you doing here?”

Shuri made a face at him. “Hiding from the doombots, obviously,” she said. “Are you _sure_ you’re a genius?”

“Doombots can see through walls,” Tony pointed out. “It’s one of their more annoying features.”

“True, but they can’t see through my cloaking technology,” she returned smugly. “We could walk right past their optical sensors right now and they’d never know we’re here.”

“Please don’t do that,” Tony said. “Just... stay here. The others aren’t long behind me.”

Shuri rolled her eyes at him. “Of course. I will keep these people safe, as if they were my own people.”

Tony tossed her a salute and continued on down the stairs. The closer he got, the easier it was to find the doombots -- they certainly weren’t being anything like stealthy. He burst into the lab they were destroying, repulsors already firing.

There were only four of them, but they were tough. Tony wondered why Doom had dropped them here -- was this some kind of extremely unsubtle corporate spy bullshit? Didn’t matter. Tony fired microgrenades, and the ‘bots retaliated with some kind of explosive that punched a hole in the exterior window.

Tony cursed, but a flash of red outside the window made him look again, trusting Friday to keep the doombots from turning him into a smear. Sure enough, Peter was swinging around outside the building, wearing his old utterly useless costume with no armor at all. He shot webbing at the hole in the window, patching it over. Then he spotted Tony, waved jauntily, gave a thumbs-up, and swung off again before the ‘bots could lock on.

By the time the rest of the Avengers arrived to help clean out the doombot infestation, Harley and Shuri had gotten all the civilians to safety, and Peter had web-patched all the cracks and holes the doombots had created, then dropped to street level to web up a temporary cast for one low-level manager who’d tripped and fallen on the stairs and broken a leg.

“You have to admit,” Steve said, prying the shield out of the back of one of the ‘bots, “the kids did a pretty good job.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, looking over at where they were standing together, excitedly comparing notes. “The kids are all right.”


End file.
